1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of integrated circuit, and more particularly to semiconductor memory.
2. Related Arts
Consumers desire to access as much multimedia contents as possible while on the go. To satisfy this desire, various multimedia-distribution models have been disclosed. One model is the “download” model, i.e. multimedia contents are wirelessly downloaded by a mobile user from the internet. However, at present or in the near future, fast, pervasive and reliable wireless internet access is not readily available. This makes multimedia download, particularly movie download, difficult. Another model is the “pre-recorded” model, i.e. pre-recorded multimedia library (PML) has been recorded in a mobile mass storage (i.e. mass storage used in a mobile device) before it is distributed to a user. Here, the word “LIBRARY” means that the mobile mass storage contains not just a small quantity of multimedia contents, but a quantity large enough so that a user can access as much multimedia contents as possible anytime anywhere.
PML places stringent requirements on the mobile mass storage in storage capacity, physical size, cost, power consumption and reliability. Take pre-recorded movie library (PmL) as an example. With each movie occupying ˜500 MB space, a PmL containing even 100 movies requires ˜50 GB space. In addition, the size of the mobile mass storage needs to be small, e.g. preferably no larger than a compact-flash (CF) card. Furthermore, the average storage cost per movie should be small, preferably comparable to the conventional means. In the conventional means, DVD is used to distribute movies and its average storage cost per movie ranges from $0.30 to $0.70. These stringent requirements cannot be met by any of existing semiconductor storage technologies. To overcome this and other difficulties, the present invention discloses a multimedia three-dimensional memory module (M3DMM).